Feeds

The Indian summer is upon us, or as it’s sometimes called in Hungarian, the crones’ summer. It’s the time of the year when you can remain in denial and tell yourself that fall hasn’t arrived yet. You can still do the same things you did in August.

You can lie out in Erzsébet Square, read a book in the Károlyi Garden, visit an open air bath, or….

You can eat the lángos of your dreams, the kind you ate as a child. The perfect type.

A lángos is of course a Hungarian deep-fried bread that can then be topped with garlic, sour cream, cheese, and occasionally even more adventurous items. And there’s a place in Budapest where you can do this in a unique place right on the river bank.

And if there is such a thing as a perfect lángos, this is where you’ll find it. The crust has just the right amount of crunch to it, with the rest of the potato-fortified dough soft and creamy. The bread is perfect, but unfortunately I can’t be as enthusiastic about the toppings. The cheese is not the worst I’ve tried, but it’s the usual flavorless mass (which has essentially become customary with every lángos), while the ham variety was topped with cheap processed ham, albeit plenty of it. My suggestion is to go with sour cream or just garlic, with a large glass of homemade elderberry or raspberry flavored soda. That option can’t be topped.

And all of this on the tables and chairs outside:

They also have good crepes (palacsinta), such as these with cocoa:

...or these with jam…

...as well as other options. The basic lángos is 380, maxing out at 640 with various toppings. The crepes are 180 forints apiece. And while you stuff your face, the Danube flows by, as the bicyclists try to outrace the arrival of autumn and some dogs bark in the distance.

I’d like to add that the owner is really friendly, but it appears that she’s become tired with cooking lángos for the past 30-40 years. She really has been in this line of work for so long, and would be happy to find something else to do (when we were there her daughter was helping out, who one day might take over).

This is the official food for the Indian summer, but unfortunately, you can only drop by on Saturday or Sunday. They’re only open on weekends these days, and only during the warmer months. They said they would be open until the end of October, again, only on the weekends.

Balkan foods are currently enjoying a renaissance. It all began with the Montenegroi (in Hungarian), which to this day remains just as awe-inspiring as it was when it first opened years ago. It was followed by PolaPola (in Hungarian), which is located closer to the downtown area and in nicer surroundings, and also offers all manner of amazing meals. And now I went and tried Yu Grill at the end of Ráday Street, near the Ring Boulevard, and I discovered that there are still ways to offer something new with these foods.

This Serbian restaurant has turned the concept of grilling up about five notches, bringing such mischievous flavors out of the meat that you’d be hard pressed to find anything similar anywhere in the city.

It’s quite interesting, that despite La Mimosa being only two streets away from me and on the way to my favorite breakfast joint Café Panini (in Hungarian), I only recently noticed it, even though it opened over a year ago. And then for my birthday my friend Ági grabbed a mille feuille from them and I instantly wanted to discover what this place was.

The dessert was unexpectedly good, truly super in fact, rich in flavors from sweet to slightly tart, so that every bite was a little different from the one before. And it wasn’t just the taste, the textures were just right too, from the cream to the pastry.

So we paid them a visit recently and ordered a bunch of desserts.

This led us to discover two things:

the mille feuille is absolutely amazing

but the other options aren’t bad either

The family-run operation opened its first confectionary in Zugló (District XIV), which is where they prepare the desserts before bringing them over to the store in District XIII near Pozsonyi Road. What makes these treats so divine is that they are never overwhelmingly sweet. Each item is well-balanced within the boundaries of good taste, just like the location itself, which is so cute that it’s almost like Hello Kitty.

A place like this is to be recommended as cold weather approaches, and, along with Delizia and the local donut shop (in Hungarian), the area is set to become a confectionary powerhouse.

We’ve written about this place on several occasions, first when it opened and began serving lunch menus (in Hungarian), and then Ádám discovered (also in Hungarian) that he loves working from here. Fortunately, he’s not the only one.

…drumroll…

We don’t want to come across as people who are more in the know than insiders and act as if this did not warrant an explanation.

In a nutshell, up until now, Huszár worked at Zóna. It’s a restaurant that didn’t get a Michelin star, but, in addition to Laci!Konyha!, it was the place to get the best meals in Budapest regardless. Both were known for their sensational quality, and something else that’s frequently missing from Michelin-starred restaurants: experimentation, using flavors in any which way possible regardless of the so-called rules, so that the final product is always near perfect. What’s more important is that it becomes impossible to make it any more exciting!

That’s what made Zóna so great and why Laci continues to be so good.

And that’s why from now on Konyha will be unavoidable, which, owing to its rather odd origins became such a gastronomic mix that you can’t find anything similar anywhere else in the city.

Let’s take a look at its key assets:

It’s centrally located downtown

The interior is free of overdone elegance; you eat among bicycles and wooden boxes

The atmosphere is super relaxed; you can easily place your feet on the table and no one will bat an eyelash

The staff are young and friendly, but they are actually more like friends than waitstaff in its classical sense, which is a good thing

And in the middle of all of this is one of the city’s best chefs

And now imagine, that you’re working on your laptop, your feet on the wooden box as you share a joke with one of the waitstaff, as people flood around you, because this place has a large clientele, and then, without exaggerating, you receive a meal that only a very few places in Budapest could serve. You eat a three course lunch menu for 2,000, forints and drink free water from the pitcher placed on your table, and then, after this epic meal, you throw your feet back up and continue working.

The height of gastronomy has never been this laid back in Budapest.

And when I say pinnacle, I mean it.

I’ll say this even though yesterday’s menu was quite simple. Let’s be honest, what can make a tomato salad interesting? Well, if the chef hand picks the best tomatoes in the morning, and the necessary garnishing veggies, adds a little of this and that on the side, and then pours a sensational homemade mayo on top, which is not only creamy, but has a slightly sour taste to it that brings out the tomatoes’ sweetness. Then, well, you realize we’re talking about a whole different ballgame here.

Or if you look on the menu, you can see a Basque sausage with bean purée and a salad that doesn’t particularly stand out. Then once you start to eat it, you have difficulty deciding which part of it is the best. The bean purée, which is so creamy and understatedly sweet that you’ve never had anything like it before, or the spicy sausage that is the polar opposite, with the entire composition complemented by the salad. Or maybe you should just consider it a meal that is greater than the sum of its already delicious parts.

And the rice pudding is on an entirely different level from what we’ve become accustomed to. By the time I got to the dessert, I simply ran out of ways to describe it.

In other words, get your butts over to Konyha, which last Tuesday was so rammed, that Huszár, who previously had not prepared lunch menus, was no doubt quite stressed. Guaranteeing this quality with such quantities is not the easiest of things, and although I certainly wouldn’t wish anyone to have a nervous breakdown in the kitchen, you have to go and try it out.

But, to make things a little easier on the staff, we ask our readers to spread their visit out over the next couple of weeks, but do, of course, go there at some point.

This is something that we’ve been waiting for pretty much ever since we’ve been writing this blog: Budapest is launching a design tender for plans to better incorporate the Danube into the city. What this means is that the first important step will be taken, and if everything goes according to plan, in a few years’ time, the Danube will be further integrated into Budapest as it won’t be separated from the rest of the city by the embankments.

This is of course a very sensitive and difficult project, because two very important requirements have to be met:

For the time being, there’s no way to remove road traffic from the embankments, since there’s no way of replacing these vital north-south arteries.

But it’s also nonsensical that we have this awesome river that’s impossible to approach for tourists and locals alike.

Therefore, these are not the new, official plans, but illustrations from an earlier, wonderful proposal.

And projects such as Danube Flow have for years tried to bring the issue to the city residents’ attention. The really cool part is that Budapest will launch a tender competition to utilize the Danube, with submissions accepted until November with the results to be announced in December. And if we can believe the municipal government, they’ll begin construction works in 2017, primarily from EU funds.

These are targeted grants, which cannot be redirected to hospitals or rescuing baby seals.

The point is that the Danube project that for so long looked impossibly far away is suddenly within reach. It’s entirely possible that central Budapest will look radically different from how it currently does by the end of the decade.

According to the design competition, the following must be taken into consideration:

The plans cannot eliminate motor vehicle traffic, or take it underground, unfortunately

Nonetheless, they will do their best to reduce vehicle traffic

Parking lots will be removed and the parking system will be overhauled

Traffic will reduced, and if it’s similar to the New Main Street in District V, that will already be a massive improvement

Freight traffic will be limited

They will develop green spaces, foot paths, bike paths, and:

All sorts of things will be built onto the Danube

What this means is that the river will become a part of everyday life, with floating exhibition spaces and stages. In the summer, we can sit out on the Danube to watch a performance, which could potentially be one of the best improvements to the city ever, if they don’t screw things up during the developments stages or aim for profit.

With respect to this, several illustrations of future plans appeared on Építészfórum recently (in Hungarian). It’s worth taking a look at them, to see the various proposals and concepts so that we get some sort of idea of the possibilities (planned by Péter Nagy and illustrated by Bence Falussy):

The first stage of the project would be the embankment between Kossuth Square and Fővám Square (by the Great Market Hall):

Once this is completed, the second stage would continue on the Pest side up to the Dagály Baths near the Árpád Bridge.

Which would be followed by developments on the Buda side:

We’re now impatiently awaiting November and the submissions. If there are good plans and the best design is chosen, the winner will fundamentally contribute to increasing Budapest’s cool factor. It all comes with great responsibility, but even greater opportunity.

If you support this project, hit the like button, so that more people can discover it!

Translation provided by Helpers Business and Immigration Services. Find us at www.helpers.hu